


Paintings

by keirakeiraa



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Military, Mystery, Personal Growth, Religion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28236597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keirakeiraa/pseuds/keirakeiraa
Summary: A boy finds himself in a strange hallway lined with portraits that seem a little too realistic. He doesn't know who he is, where he is, or why he's there, but he certainly has an entitled attitude to make up for it. As he encounters more and more paintings, he unveils more information about himself until he reaches the end of the hallway and a potentially ugly truth.
Kudos: 1





	Paintings

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! This is a big WIP for me at the moment, and I'll be updating with each new section!! I'd love to hear some feedback :)
> 
> NOTE: The main character is not likable and isn't supposed to be right now. If you find him almost unbearable, I wrote his character correctly. This first section is also meant to be confusing, as you're experiencing it with the main character, who doesn't have a clue about what's going on.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The paintings’ eyes follow him down the corridor, sticking to him like tar. If only he could recognize this gods-forsaken hallway. He’s been here before, can feel the familiarity in his bones. Yet, there he is, without a clue of which way to go or who all these people are who have the audacity to stare at him through their antiqued sceneries of gouache and oil. He plods on, fingers stretching out beside him in nervous anticipation of whatever he’s here for. There has to be a reason.

On and on he goes, the sound of his footsteps ranging from whispers to thunder by the second, hardly even matching up with the pattern in which his feet fall. Maybe it’s a code, he thinks to himself with a demoralized laugh. Clip, clip, BANG, swish, BOOM… He grows tired of listening.

Exasperated, he turns toward a portrait, low enough to the ground for him to stare right back into those invasive eyes, and glares.

To his surprise, the painting glares right back with a malicious gleam in its eyes. Forest greens and muted grays shift as the figure, clad in some type of military uniform and laughter lines that clash with the hostile expression on his face, turns towards the boy. The man waits, blinking.

After a moment passes and the shock wears off, the boy says, “So… are you going to tell me what the hell is going on here?” and begins to tap his foot impatiently.

The portrait shakes his head slightly and casts his eyes downward. Slowly, he lifts one palm and places it against something hard and unseen, as if he's pressing against the pigments keeping him framed. When the boy continues staring with a mixture of bewilderment and contempt, he sighs and nods towards his hand. The boy hesitantly puts his palm against the painted hand and grimaces when he finds it’s wet with fresh paint. He locks eyes with the uniformed man as colors flash and lock into place.

*

He isn’t in the hallway anymore, and for that, he lets out a breath. A moment later, he realizes he still doesn’t know where he is and that he still has that infuriatingly vague sense of recognition. Damn, he can’t catch a break, can he? Pale yellow walls and hardwood floors surround him as sunlight that warms his skin softly filters through a large window. There were plants in abundance, and a humble dinner table next to an exuberantly decorated kitchen.

His face falls back into that aggravated look he’d been wearing as he looks around for gods know what. That portrait must have tricked him, and it’s nowhere in sight. He clenches his fists so hard that his nails break the skin of his palm, readying to punch something, anything, before noises freeze him in place.

Twinkling laughter is carried through the house by a draft sailing through an open window, bright and careless. A cluster of steps grows louder by the second, so the boy composes himself, preparing to demand the answers he deserves. He raises his chin high and crosses his arms as he hears keys jingle and watches the doorknob turn, foot tapping restlessly against the weathered hardwood floors. A woman with mousy brown hair hastily tied up in a bun and smile lines caressing her mouth walks in, holding the hand of a child. Another child, two or three years older, walks in after them, slinging a bright blue backpack off of his shoulder.

The boy waits expectantly for the family to notice him and tell him what the hell’s going on. Some apologies and groveling to make up for the massive inconvenience wouldn’t hurt, either. They walk into the bright kitchen where the boy is waiting, sitting on the countertop, and start bustling around. The woman goes to a cabinet and pulls out bread and some sort of jar, presumably to make the children an after-school snack while they, as one, sit down at the table and pull out light blue papers, looking at their mom with wide, excited eyes. Are they ignoring him? Why in the world was this ragtag group not acknowledging the stranger sitting on their kitchen counter? The boy coughs, coughs again but louder, and once more until he gives up on discreetly getting the woman’s attention and goes to shake her shoulder. As his fingers meet the knit of her cardigan, she passes through his grip like a hologram. No, that’s not right. He passes through her.

The woman turns around with two fresh sandwiches in her hands and sets them on the small kitchen island. “Boys! Come eat. Connor, I need you to show me your homework for the night and Aidan, as soon as you're done with your snack go get your soccer clothes on, it’s tryouts day!” She grabs half of one of the sandwiches and takes a bite, earning a protest from the younger boy, distracted from pulling out a packet from his folder.

The older one, Aidan, apparently, sits down and talks to his mother through bites. “Mom, d’ya think I’ll make the team? Some of those guys are crazy good.”

“I know you will, honey, just try your best. I put a pinch of good luck in that sandwich of yours, so you better eat up,” his mom says with a wink. Aidan rolls his eyes and chuckled, but he started to eat a bit faster.

The boy sits on the counter, bored but observant. Is he a ghost? He doesn’t remember dying, but honestly, he doesn’t remember much at all. The only thing he’s sure about is that he doesn’t know these people and couldn’t care less about soccer tryouts or homework; he just wants to know why he has to be here instead of quite literally anywhere else even a little bit more interesting. Since he obviously has no tether to this mundane little trio or any physical surroundings, all he can do is watch.

“Momma, Momma, Momma!” the little one squeals, finally ready to present his gathering of folders and a blue paper as he climbs onto a stool, “Aidan and I have something you need to sign!”

Aidan shares an excited look with Connor and runs back to his backpack, returning a moment later with an identical set of blue papers. They slide the forms across the counter to their mom and start talking at the same time.

“So we have a-” “It’s so cool, mom!” “and we want to go so ba-” “Please, please, please!” “The whole school is goi-” “Momma it’d be so fun!”

The mom smiles at the pair softly before their barrage of pleading is interrupted by the ring of a doorbell, the brightness of the sound matching the excitement on the brothers’ faces. She tells her boys to finish their food as she heads towards the door, absentmindedly thumbing a pendant around her neck.

Oh. Wait a second. Now, this whole time the boy has felt like he should know what’s going on and has been infuriatingly frustrated by the absence of such. He finally knows something, at least. That pendant is important. Not like that asshole painting, and definitely not like those little people back there, but actually important. So, naturally, he decides to follow.

The woman lets the necklace fall back to its resting place against her chest as she hastily tries to fix her hair and smooth down her wrinkled shirt. She lets out a quick breath and opens the door with a creak. As soon as she does, all the blood rushes from her face and leaves her bone-white, hands shaking and eyes locked on the uniformed man standing on her porch.

The boy notices that the man is wearing the same type of uniform as the painting who'd led him here in the first place. Maybe he’d finally get some goddamn answers. He leans back against a wall, too far away to hear the woman’s conversation with the man and not in the mood to listen in, and starts tapping his foot impatiently once again. If she could just hurry their little chat, he could run after the man and try to get him to talk. No matter that the boy seems invisible to everyone else. They're probably not important enough.

The uniformed man offers the woman a stiff hug and walks away from the house in perfectly placed and unfortunately swift movements. The boy jolts up and runs straight through the woman, chasing after him. He places himself right in front of the officer and plants his feet, trying his very hardest to solidify enough to get the man’s attention. He closes his eyes, focuses, and when he opens them again the man is thirty feet away, getting into a car. With a furious groan, he sprints and tries to launch himself onto the car and is promptly stopped by something in mid-air. He lands back on the ground with a grunt, panting heavily, rage pouring out with every breath.

He. Does. Not. Deserve. This. He gets up and punches the air where his previous failure still hangs, and his arm bounces right back onto him. He’s in prison, or some sort of hell, or whatever. All he wants to know is, why?

He trudges back to the house, ego bruised but not enough for him to admit it, and finds the woman sitting on the weathered steps of her porch. Her shoulders curve around herself in a protective cocoon against the aggressively suburban shrubs lining her house. She’s shaking slightly, but her head is too obscured by the knees cradling it for the boy to tell if she’s laughing or crying. He waits and watches, tired of searching for the answer to whatever is going on, and resolves to simply wait for it to come to him.

After a while, she lifts her head, face surprisingly devoid of tears, and pulls a late-model phone from the back pocket of her jeans. After staring at the screen for a second too long, she dials a number and waits.

The boy hears a cheerful female voice come from the device, but it’s too muffled for him to comprehend the words. The woman’s other hand clenches the fabric around her heart. A moment goes by without any response from the woman and the other line sounds again, this time with an inquisitive upward inflection. A breath, and then the woman’s face crumples. The bright atmosphere of the quaint house seems to drain with every poorly restrained sob, and the boy puts his nagging impatience on hold. He sits down on the steps, a good space away from the woman and quite uncomfortable, as she finally opens her mouth to speak.

“Mom,” A sharp intake of breath follows. “I don't,” she releases the breath with a push, “I don’t know what to do. Or- Or say,”

The breathing quickens, “I can’t do it. I can’t. It’s not real, right?”

A pause from the other line, a short response, and then, “What happened? Momma. Mom, I don’t know. I can’t- It’s not real. It’s not. Right? What am I even supposed to tell them?”

The voice makes a small, short noise before rapid-firing some sort of promise, and then a swift beep of the call ending sounds. The woman lets the phone fall from her hand and clatter to the ground, resting on the choppy lawn.

Her other hand unfurls, and the blood dripping down her palm shocks the boy from his observant trance. The pendant falls from where it had been hidden in her grip, edges stained a deep red, and the boy feels something cold and oily in his stomach at the sight of it. She doesn’t seem to notice her wounds and uses her cardigan to wipe at her face in a futile attempt of looking normal. She pushes herself up to standing and slowly starts to move towards the door, a mocking red. The boy sits, trying to understand the alien feeling overcoming him. She’s halfway inside by the time he remembers to follow.

The boys hear the door creak open and peek their heads around the corner, eyes giant with curiosity. Connor notices the state of his mother and goes to nag for answers, but his brother holds him back and gives him a pointed look. Aidan takes his brother’s hand and leads him to the bottom of the stairs, where they both take a seat and wait.

The mother looks at her sons as if she’s seeing right through them, chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm. Her oldest calls for her and she rushes over to them, crouching down and taking their hands. Aidan winces at the blood now staining his soccer uniform.

She takes a shaky breath, “We- Um, we can’t go to tryouts tonight, Baby. I’m sorry, I know you were excited and- and you,” Aidan interrupts her.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” The mother pulls Connor in an embrace, his head eye level with the pendant as confused tears slip down his face.

“We can all have a big sleepover in my room tonight, ok, and Grandma is going to stay with us for a little while," words tumble out of her mouth as she squeezes her boys tighter.

“Mom! What is going on?”

She looks down, eyes shut, wishing she could escape this suffocating situation.

“Daddy isn’t coming home,”

She looks up, almost shocked that she spoke the words out loud, as Connor pulled out of her arms.

“What?” He peers into his mother’s eyes, looking for some sort of hidden joke or explanation.

“Ever?” Aidan asks, dropping his family’s hands.

Their mother shakes her head, tears falling and mixing with blood.

Aidan blinks once, then runs up the stairs without a word. After a moment Connor follows.

The boy stares at the empty air where the children had sat and lets out a slow breath. Well, this is awkward. Very awkward. If he could interact with anything, he might try and comfort her. He shakes his head. No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d at least try and distract her with his own problems, though. Then maybe she could help.

He goes to sit in front of the mother, but before he can even take his seat she gets up and turns around with a fervor, some sort of purpose that hadn’t been there seconds before driving her further into the house.

He hadn’t seen this area before. It’s a living room of sorts, as uncomfortably cheerful as the rest of the house, yet considerably more worn. The threadbare upholstery in three spots on the couch, coffee rings on the table, and books varying from superhero to self-help all tell him the exact same thing: this is where the family spends their time. Together. The boy tries to remember if he has ever had a place like this, where there’s such an obvious connection to others, but all he comes up with is a feeling of blankness. Whatever. It must be because he can’t remember much about himself at all.

A big, royal blue armchair in near-perfect condition under the layers of dust catches his eye. He sits, sinking into the plush cushions, and hears something crinkle by his feet. He grabs it, finding a star crudely cut out of construction paper with the words Daddy’s Throne scribbled onto it. Oh. Well, the throne part is certainly fitting for him, but perhaps it’s a bit distasteful to sit in a dead man’s chair.

The woman had been quiet for a while, but now her dramatic crying returns at full force. The boy walks over to where she’d been kneeling and peers over her shoulder to see a small, cluttered table. That strange feeling in his stomach kicks back up again as he realizes that the table and the necklace both give him that same feeling of pay attention. At least this means that he’s getting somewhere, but he despises puzzles. He moves through the woman to inspect the table closely.

Clue, clue, clue- there has to be a clue here somewhere. A note with detailed instructions would be preferable. A half-circle of freshly lit candles cradle a framed picture of a large man in ornate clothing, crowned by that same symbol he saw on the woman’s necklace. The same symbol is scattered around the table in the form of trinkets or vials, and a book lays open on a bottom shelf. Maybe that man is who he should be looking for. Or maybe the symbol is some sort of key… God, it’s impossible to think with that woman’s shuddering behind him. He turns around, expecting a mess of tears and whatnot, but instead finds her brows knit together and mouth twisted into an ugly scowl. Woah.

She reaches through him and grabs candles, as many as can fit into her delicate hands, and stalks over to a brick-lined fireplace, shoving them in and igniting a small fire. She walks back over, right through the boy sitting still with shock, and grabs the trinkets. One by one, she tosses them into the growing flame, hands dripping with hot wax. Each time a symbol is eaten by the angry heat, that cold and oily feeling grows, creeping into new parts of him. God, it feels gross.

She walks back, slowly this time, and grabs the framed man, the glass protection over him now cracked. Calmly, she returns to the fire and stares at the man, whose previously benevolent smile now seems mocking. With a sudden shriek, she throws the portrait into the flame hard enough to send out a billow of ash.

She falls to her knees, and the boy sees her grief so visibly it leaves him shaking. Her hands, covered in dry blood and wax, grip hair that now falls around her face like a funeral veil. The boy looks away, the feeling that had been plaguing him now encompassing his whole body to the point where the line between it and him is no longer distinguishable and realizes that he’s now by her side. He kneels beside her and wraps his arms around her, watching as the last of the framed man is destroyed by the fire.


End file.
